Jungle Comics

In the 1940s, long before the founders of Image were twinkles in their parents’ eyes, Fiction House made the important discovery that people would buy comics to look at pictures of half-naked women. Jungle Comics was one of their flagship titles, with a format featuring (white) African adventurers (both male and female) wrestling with lions, discovering lost cities and elephant graveyards, hunting down cruel native kings and craven poachers—all while wearing as little clothing as physically possible.

Among the regular features in Jungle Comics were Ka’a’nga, Lord of the Jungle (the obligatory Tarzan clone), Wambi the Jungle Boy, explorer Terry Thunder, and, of course, Camilla, a variation on their own character Sheena, who appeared in Jumbo Comics. Top artists like Lou Fine and Will Eisner worked on early issues of the run, then left the features in the hands of the workman-like Fiction House staff.